Gotta love them blaming this on the previous superintendent - never mind that the people who actually count the numbers should've known better. Surprised there is no report on the rampant reclassification of robberies to thefts, either.

In many cities there entire areas I'm surprised anyone tracks. Those areas it'd be easier to quarantine off with police and let the issues sort themselves out. Go in after a few months with some dump trucks and toss the bodies in the back.

It's not only assaults and other crimes. Even traffic violations (that don't net the city wads of cash) often go unreported. You practically have to crawl into a police department and beg to file a report if you're in an accident that doesn't send someone to the hospital or total a car. Police won't respond to the scene unless an ambulance is required (though if your car is undrivable the operator at 311 will call a tow truck for you).

My wife got hit downtown at 3 or 4am and was not impressed. The police did not give a single shiat about her safety alone in a disabled car at 3am. Fortunately the guy who hit her calmed down and was nice after he stopped yelling at her (he ran a stop light).

The CPD is more concerned about writing seat belt tickets than fighting crime. They will drive right pass the guy yelling "weed, blows, park" just to harass the person stepping out the car to go into a store(to write a seat belt ticket)./That shiat happened to me. I took off my seat belt opened the car door to go into a store and the police hit me with the lights and wrote a seat belt ticket

drjekel_mrhyde:The CPD is more concerned about writing seat belt tickets than fighting crime. They will drive right pass the guy yelling "weed, blows, park" just to harass the person stepping out the car to go into a store(to write a seat belt ticket)./That shiat happened to me. I took off my seat belt opened the car door to go into a store and the police hit me with the lights and wrote a seat belt ticket

This is similar to how the assault weapons ban successfully lowered how many people were killed by assault weapons. It's not that they didn't report the crimes, but people killed by the upper weapon in this photo were not killed by an "assault weapon":

Long ago, when the FBI was trying to assemble international stats for the first time, to compare American homicide rates to European ones, they couldn't account for the fact that some nations, for instance, Switzerland, had such dramatically lower rates, even allowing for things like gun ownership, poverty, etc.

Turned out that in the US, we were tabulating ALL homicides (1st, 2d, 3d degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, cleared and uncleared) while the Swiss were only tabulating cleared 1st degree murders in their "homicide" category. When all violent deaths were thus calculated, the Swiss rate, while still lower than the US rate, was not nearly so marked as previously believed.

Gyrfalcon:This is hardly news, or confined to Chicago or indeed the US.

Long ago, when the FBI was trying to assemble international stats for the first time, to compare American homicide rates to European ones, they couldn't account for the fact that some nations, for instance, Switzerland, had such dramatically lower rates, even allowing for things like gun ownership, poverty, etc.

Turned out that in the US, we were tabulating ALL homicides (1st, 2d, 3d degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, cleared and uncleared) while the Swiss were only tabulating cleared 1st degree murders in their "homicide" category. When all violent deaths were thus calculated, the Swiss rate, while still lower than the US rate, was not nearly so marked as previously believed.

"Lies, damn lies and statistics."

The UK and Australia, among others, still cook the books a LOT on crime stats.

chitownmike:drjekel_mrhyde: The CPD is more concerned about writing seat belt tickets than fighting crime. They will drive right pass the guy yelling "weed, blows, park" just to harass the person stepping out the car to go into a store(to write a seat belt ticket)./That shiat happened to me. I took off my seat belt opened the car door to go into a store and the police hit me with the lights and wrote a seat belt ticket

Oksure.gif

Come to the Westside(Grand and Central area) and you'll see what I mean. They know most people from that area won't contest a seat belt ticket.

"The report said the IG's office decided against auditing homicide statistics after determining the odds were low that police officials would downgrade homicides to involuntary manslaughter or reckless homicide."

Big deal, Detroit's done the same thing for years. They don't bother to even pull anyone over for traffic violations. 911 is useless, and good luck getting your garbage picked up any given week, or trying to ride a bus. Stop whining, Chicago, you're paradise by comparison, and we still have better pizza.

Kit Fister:Gyrfalcon: This is hardly news, or confined to Chicago or indeed the US.

Long ago, when the FBI was trying to assemble international stats for the first time, to compare American homicide rates to European ones, they couldn't account for the fact that some nations, for instance, Switzerland, had such dramatically lower rates, even allowing for things like gun ownership, poverty, etc.

Turned out that in the US, we were tabulating ALL homicides (1st, 2d, 3d degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, cleared and uncleared) while the Swiss were only tabulating cleared 1st degree murders in their "homicide" category. When all violent deaths were thus calculated, the Swiss rate, while still lower than the US rate, was not nearly so marked as previously believed.

"Lies, damn lies and statistics."

The UK and Australia, among others, still cook the books a LOT on crime stats.

It's not even cooking the books so much as creative definitions. What IS "homicide"? There is no universal definition. Is it any unlawful killing with malice, or is it only premeditated murder, or does it exclude (or include) voluntary manslaughter or negligent homicide? Please state your answers in 25 words or less. For every person who thinks, for instance, that Dick Cheney is uncontrovertibly guilty of 1st degree murder, there is another who could exonerate OJ Simpson because the biatch needed killin'. YMMV

In the Scandinavian countries, where the focus is more on rehabilitation than on punishment, crimes tend to be defined very narrowly so that prosecutors have plenty of room for alternative sentencing; whereas in the US, with our indeterminate sentences, "crime" is pretty much whatever the DA in that particular jurisdiciton feels like charging that day. In the former USSR, where all crime was the result of capitalism and didn't exist in the pure and holy communist system, there was no crime against the person or property...but an astonishing array of political crimes (Article 58) so that robbery, arson, spitting on the sidewalk, etc., was a political crime and punishable although never reported as a CRIME like in the decadent capitalistic West.

Heh, yeah. When I was pickpocketed on the State street subway, when I called the Chicago Police Department to report it and get a police report number for the bank, the cop kept asking "did you SEE the wallet being pickpocketed? No? Then you LOST your wallet, see?" Despite me having evidence that about $400 worth of charges were made on my cards before we even got off the train.

Baltimore has been skewing murder statistics by claiming anyone thrown off a roof or overpass committed suicide. There mayor (now governor) O'Malley took suicides out of the murder statistics and effectively allowed gangs to murder their enemies without a police investigation by throwing them off a high place.

Isn't what they are/were doing essentially the same as Bill Clinton saying that it depends what your definition of "is" is? Seriously. Semantics, word games and dodging the truth.

The city has for a mayor a political hack trying to impersonate someone with leadership skills. And the TV show Chicagoland is mere propaganda to make him appear as larger than life, in order to advance his political career.

/bottom line is that the crime rate has not been lowered, even though it might appear that way//weren't we always told (in our younger days) you can't believe everything you read, see or hear?

NFA:Baltimore has been skewing murder statistics by claiming anyone thrown off a roof or overpass committed suicide. There mayor (now governor) O'Malley took suicides out of the murder statistics and effectively allowed gangs to murder their enemies without a police investigation by throwing them off a high place.

Police? He committed suicide there's nothing to investigate.

excuse me, not that I necessarily agree with classifying deliberate homicides as suicide, but since when is actual suicide a "murder", and why should it be included in the murder statistics? People seem to be real funny about reporting suicides as though they were inherently "Wrong" or a crime. Ultimately speaking, people have the right to end their own lives, and live, or die, on their own terms. Period. My body, my ultimate right to kill myself. Stop trying to define it as a crime. It's not.

Gyrfalcon:Kit Fister: Gyrfalcon: This is hardly news, or confined to Chicago or indeed the US.

Long ago, when the FBI was trying to assemble international stats for the first time, to compare American homicide rates to European ones, they couldn't account for the fact that some nations, for instance, Switzerland, had such dramatically lower rates, even allowing for things like gun ownership, poverty, etc.

Turned out that in the US, we were tabulating ALL homicides (1st, 2d, 3d degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, cleared and uncleared) while the Swiss were only tabulating cleared 1st degree murders in their "homicide" category. When all violent deaths were thus calculated, the Swiss rate, while still lower than the US rate, was not nearly so marked as previously believed.

"Lies, damn lies and statistics."

The UK and Australia, among others, still cook the books a LOT on crime stats.

It's not even cooking the books so much as creative definitions. What IS "homicide"? There is no universal definition. Is it any unlawful killing with malice, or is it only premeditated murder, or does it exclude (or include) voluntary manslaughter or negligent homicide? Please state your answers in 25 words or less. For every person who thinks, for instance, that Dick Cheney is uncontrovertibly guilty of 1st degree murder, there is another who could exonerate OJ Simpson because the biatch needed killin'. YMMV

In the Scandinavian countries, where the focus is more on rehabilitation than on punishment, crimes tend to be defined very narrowly so that prosecutors have plenty of room for alternative sentencing; whereas in the US, with our indeterminate sentences, "crime" is pretty much whatever the DA in that particular jurisdiciton feels like charging that day. In the former USSR, where all crime was the result of capitalism and didn't exist in the pure and holy communist system, there was no crime against the person or property...but an astonishing array of political crimes (Article 58) so ...

IIRC, a few years back Chicago was already getting heat for the way they classified crimes. Shot in your own home? Domestic Violence. Shot at your workplace? Company accident. These kinds of covering of crime statistics make it a lot harder to just use the "what is homicide" question of what is really going on with crime. It's like looking at a body with 14 broken bones, and questioning why the medical report classified a burn mark as a rash. We're splitting hairs on more minor details when there is clearly larger issues to tackle first.